Media Monkey's Edinburgh Diary

• For those people who missed James Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture on Friday evening, he offered a pithy 13-word summary in his Q&A session hosted by the former Endemol boss Peter Bazalgette the following morning. "Would you like free press and the freedom of speech - or the iPlayer?" Hmm, Monkey's still chewing on that one. Can we get back to you next week?

• Murdoch was nearly a no-show at the annual dinner that follows the MacTaggart lecture, where the News Corp boss had his unfortunate bust-up with the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston. Monkey hears he was planning a private dinner with his newly anointed News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade) and the Sun columnist Jeremy Clarkson, but was persuaded to come along to the festival bash at the 11th hour. Clarkson and Brooks came along too, but the Top Gear presenter balked at the prospect of taking the festival bus to the venue, and drove there in his Mercedes instead.

• Channel Five's director of programmes, Richard Woolfe, had a secret weapon in his bid to win TV's Got Talent, the special festival edition of Britain's Got Talent. Monkey hears he recruited a choreographer from Sky1's circus arts and street entertainment show, Cirque du Soleil, to help him with his only slightly underwhelming Irish jig. The BBC's Chris Cox, who also took part, was even better prepared - the magician and mind reader has already appeared in three Edinburgh fringe festival shows and two in London, which Monkey can't help but feel wasn't quite in the spirit of the amateur talent show. It didn't do Cox - who can sometimes be heard on Chris Moyles's Radio 1 show - much good. He trailed in sixth, three places behind ... Richard Woolfe.

• If the scale of the BBC's activities is "chilling" James Murdoch, then so was the music accompanying his exit from the festival stage as he headed for his private plane. "Grew from monkey into man/ then I crushed 15 million with a wave of my hand/ I grew drunk on water turned into wine/ til I was slave and master at the same time." Murdoch knows his music, but apparently the song by the Dave Matthews Band - they're from America - was not his choice. Maybe it was a subliminal message from the festival organisers instead.

• Sky News's political editor, Adam Boulton, was an unexpected guest at the Channel Five festival dinner at the Atrium restaurant. Unexpected in the sense that they didn't have any room for Boulton and his wife, Tony Blair's former aide Anji Hunter. Fortunately Five's chairman and chief executive, Dawn Airey, had to leave early to go to the MacTaggart dinner, but one place still had to be found. So Airey's long-serving PA, Janet Gain, generously gave way.

• Monkey's unlikely impression of the festival: Peter Andre surprised (and delighted) delegates with a gruff, sweary, impression of Richard Desmond - or King Rich, to Andre, who he says is a good friend. Or was ...

• Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly were sanguine about their attempt to break the US market, which ended rather unfortunately with ABC gameshow flop Wanna Bet?. And to think it had all started so well, with the studio audience laughing at their every joke and loving everything they did, McPartlin remembered. "The producer said it was amazing what you can get for $15 an hour. That's what they paid the audience! It was a bit of a kick in the teeth." If only the BBC had tried that with their Saturday-night turkey, Totally Saturday.

• Monkey's comeback of the week: "This is 5 Live, not TalkSport. Please!" Richard Bacon, making his standup debut at the Edinburgh fringe festival live on BBC Radio 5 Live, to a four-letter heckle from the audience.

• The good people of the UKTV channel Dave came up with a cunning marketing wheeze for this year's festival ahead of the annual channel of the year awards. A couple of battered-looking brown suitcases were adorned with stickers bearing the legend "The case for Dave" and UKTV gofers heaved them on - and then off again - the baggage carousels at Edinburgh airport. Over and over again. Quite apart from the security implications, Monkey wonders whether they would have been better off lugging them around Edinburgh railway station. With budgets feeling the pinch, many delegates forwent their plane and let the train take the strain instead.

• When he's not coming up with epoch-making TV shows, what does The Wire creator, David Simon, watch on the box? "News and sport," said Simon, but don't mention 24-hour news channels, which he described as "pretty much a cesspool". But what does he sprawl out on the sofa to? "I would probably get a box set. I will vegetate in front of Family Guy like everyone else in America." So now you know.